Deadly Proof: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

by Locke, M. Louisa

  “All the more reason for me to go over there now and tell Timmons what we’ve been thinking,” said Nate.

  Annie grabbed his arm, crying, “We must hurry. Laura told me she might stop by to see Seth on her way here. They could both be in danger!”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Monday, late evening, August 2, 1880

  “In the Police Court yesterday morning a woman named Maggie Getty was tried and found guilty of stealing a copy of the German Demokrat from the door of a subscriber.” San Francisco Chronicle, August 4, 1880

  Seth stood on the Babcock’s high platform, slowly feeding in the pages for the next day’s edition of the California Demokrat. Dunk was on the floor catching the printed pages and sliding them over to the growing stack beside him. It was a little before eight, and Seth had been at work since four. His plan was to skip dinner tonight so he could still get everything done by midnight and leave at his regular time.

  He chatted with Dunk over the sound of the machine, so as not to lose his concentration. He’d tried to get a few hours of rest before coming into work but wasn’t successful. When he was driving cattle, he could go for days without much sleep, but the sheer nervous energy he’d run on for the past few days was taking its toll. And he wasn’t a young man anymore.

  Two years ago, when he turned thirty, he discovered that he couldn’t skimp on sleep for too many nights in a row without paying a cost in the clarity of his mind. And last night’s vigil, sitting on a hard bench in his jail cell, left him with an aching lower back and a stiff neck.

  All of which he’d forgotten when Laura swept up to him at the city jail and pulled him along in her wake. Before he knew it, he was sitting on the Oakland ferry, in clean clothes, his flesh still stinging from the dousing with cold water Ned had gleefully given him under the pump at the back of the alley. They made it to the exam rooms at the university with ten minutes to spare.

  On the ferry he tried several times, to no avail, to get Laura aside from Kitty and Ned so he could thank her for what she’d done for him. Finally, as he waited outside the door to the examination room, he found himself alone with her and started to speak. She’d just put her finger up to his mouth and shushed him. She said that one thing she’d learned this past year was that real friendship wasn’t conditional. She’d surprised him by stretching up to kiss him on the cheek, while whispering, “Good Luck.”

  Then the exam door opened, and some downy-cheeked boy staggered out, looking very much like he’d been through a wringer and muttering something about how he’d said the Amazon was in Africa. That made Seth laugh, and he’d gone into the room in good spirits. Not much they could throw at him that didn’t pale in comparison to how he’d spent the past twenty-four hours—fearing he was going to swing at the end of a rope for a murder he’d not committed.

  While he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, he rather enjoyed the exam. Getting to spend an hour in intelligent conversation about academic subjects was a pleasure after teaching fourth grade students and running a printing press. He also suspected that the professors found his lack of nerves a pleasant change. As a teacher, he knew the agony of watching a student fall apart under pressure, and he reasoned that a good number of the students who failed the exam did so because of sheer youth and inexperience. He just hoped that Laura and her friends didn’t make up one of their numbers.

  “Seth, that last page was a bit faint. Time to check the ink reservoir,” yelled out Dunk.

  Seth pulled the lever that stopped the cylinders and came down to look. “Yes. See here, Dunk, you’ve been working nearly six hours. Why don’t you take a dinner break? Go out and get some fresh air. I’ll fill up the ink and go over the machine. I didn’t take the time to check the bolts this afternoon when I came in.”

  As he watched his apprentice rip off his apron, grab his cap and coat, and run out of the shop, he smiled. Such youthful high spirits! When Seth arrived this afternoon, Dunk was bursting with the news of the announcement Catherine Rashers had just made.

  He’d said, “She had us all turn off the machines so she could be heard. Then she made this little speech. Looked pretty as a picture standing on a stool so’s we could all see her. There was this smart-looking gentleman with her, and this old coot I’ve seen around before—the lawyer.”

  When Seth asked about the smart-looking gentleman, Dunk had been a little unclear about who he was but said that after Mrs. Rasher’s speech, the man had walked around the shop shaking everyone’s hands.

  Later Seth found out from one of the day shift printers that the man had been Jack Neppier and that he was the widow’s new business partner. He wondered if Mrs. Fuller and Mr. Dawson knew about this development and if it had any bearing on Rashers’ death...or Orrie’s murder for that matter.

  It was odd being back at the shop. Didn’t appear that anyone even knew that he’d been arrested. Dunk did say that Mrs. Rashers herself had stopped by the Babcock and told the gentleman that Seth was coming in late because he was off taking some exam. Dunk said they seemed to think this was a good thing. But not a word about Orrie. Not even Dunk mentioned her—and he’d really expected the boy would be filled with all sorts of speculation about what happened to the young typesetter.

  It was as if the news about the new partnership—and that no one would be losing their jobs—had wiped her from all of their memories.

  “Damnation, what the hell are you doin’ here?”

  The back doors to the shop slammed open, and Franklin Griggs stood there, his usually friendly face screwed up in a belligerent scow.

  “Sorry I was late,” Seth said. “Got held up. But we are on track to get the Democrat done on time.”

  Meanwhile, he thought, Here is a man who doesn’t look happy about the new partnership.

  Griggs squinted, as if he wasn’t seeing very well, his ruddy coloring now an unhealthy shade of purple, and the smell of alcohol came off of him in waves.

  “Got held up...tha’s a good one. Got locked up in the city jail.” Griggs put his finger alongside his nose, as if they were sharing a secret. “Murderin’ bastard. Why’d they let you out?”

  “Seems like they decided they’d made a mistake,” said Seth, keeping his voice low and calm. Thinking the man might be cut up over Orrie’s death, he said, “I was right sorry to hear about what happened to Miss Childers.”

  “Bitch. They all are. Did’ya hear about what the widder Rashers did? Didn’t wait until old Josh was cold in his grave ‘for she jumped in bed with some young blood. Gonna run things...no need for old Griggsie.”

  Seth took a deep breath and said, “Hmm. Well, I best get back to work, have the machine ready to go when Dunk gets back.” He’d learned from experience that trying to have any sort of conversation with a drunk was a hopeless task. This was a man looking for a fight, and he wasn’t going to oblige.

  Griggs peered around as if he’d just noticed that the shop was empty. “All bitches...even Mrs. Holier-than-me Sullivan...I fixed her! Where’s the farm boy? Off flipping the skirts of one a those box girls from upstairs. He’ll learn soon enough.”

  “Dunk’s on his dinner break. He’ll be back soon. Do you have any work for me to do while he’s gone?”

  “Work? What do I care? Gotta get me some...thing...from my office.” As he went past Seth, he glared and said, “You shouldn’t be here.”

  Griggs stumbled through the rest of the shop, where most of the gas lights had been turned off. As Seth watched him bang into objects, he remembered how it was to wake up—bruised––with no memory of how those bruises had occurred. Poor old man was going to hurt in the morning.

  Seth went over to the shelf where his tool chest was and lifted it down onto the floor. He heard some curses that told him Griggs had made it to his supply room office and thought sadly about the deterioration he’d seen in the foreman since Rashers’ death. The man must be disappointed, but he was a fool if he’d really thought that Mrs. Rashers was going to let him to run her business. Bu
t what did he mean about fixing Mrs. Sullivan?

  He opened up the tool chest and found himself staring stupidly at the space among all the tools where the large wrench usually rested. A wrench he’d seen last in the police station, red with Orrie Childers’ blood. After a moment, he sighed, not wanting to think about that wrench, the drunken foreman, or the murdered girl. Let someone else figure it all out. He just wanted to work.

  He went over to the Gordon job printer that was on the other side of the back door. He thought that he remembered seeing a wrench that would work in the tool box there.

  He crouched down, pulled the box out from under the printer, and opened up the lid. Everything was a jumble, and he started to shift some smaller wrenches to look at the bottom of the box when he heard, well rather smelled, Griggs come up behind him.

  “Looking for this?” Griggs said.

  When Seth turned around, he saw a large wrench in the man’s upraised hand, just before Griggs swung it down towards his head.

  *****

  Laura hurried up Sansome towards the Niantic. She’d told Annie that she would meet them at the jail no later than eight-thirty so they could go home together, but she really wanted to stop by and see Seth first.

  When she arrived at the WCPU around four, Iris immediately asked her how the examination had gone. Laura started to tell her forewoman about which questions she felt good about, which she thought she might have muffed, when Iris stopped her and said, “Miss Laura Dawson, what has happened? You look like you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

  And just like that, Laura had started weeping. Iris pulled her into her office and closed the door, and everything spilled out. The fight with Seth on Saturday afternoon and her decision to go to his place and apologize that night. Their agreement to be friends, falling asleep (she didn’t mention the kisses), and the discovery the next day that Seth had been arrested for Orrie Childers’ murder, and her fight to get the police to believe her that she’d been with him at the time of the murder.

  When she finally brought her tale to a close with the mad dash across the city to get Seth to his exam on time, Iris whooped and said it was better than a dime novel. That made Laura laugh, and she felt much better. How could she ever have believed for a second that this kind and sensible woman was a murderer?

  But now, as she walked briskly to the Niantic, she thought about the one piece of advice Iris had given her.

  “Don’t let everyone turn this into some sort of big event—good or bad,” she’d said. “If you were a male friend—and you’d stepped up to give him an alibi––no one would think anything of it. If you want the freedom to pursue a career, have friends of both sexes, determine your own fate, you can’t let outmoded ideas of womanly behavior guide you.”

  Laura felt confident she’d eventually weather what ever the consequences would be of her actions. Even from her brother—because she knew she would have Annie’s support. Although she didn’t welcome the idea of her parents finding out. Thank goodness they weren’t about to arrive in town for the wedding.

  Seth, on the other hand, she worried about. Which was why she wanted to see him tonight...not let him work himself up into thinking that somehow what had happened (and she wasn’t talking about the kisses) was his fault or that it meant they couldn’t remain friends.

  A few minutes later, when she got to the second floor of the Niantic and the wide open doors that the night porter said to look for, she stopped, taken aback by how dark everything was inside the print shop. She could hear the rumble of a big machine inside the door to her right, and she saw bulky shadows that looked to her like tables and small printers in the middle of the room. Long strips of galley proofs were strung across the room like so much washing, outlined by a faint light coming from the back of the shop. But none of the gas lights in the room were on, which seemed very strange, given the sound of a working printer. She slowly stepped forward, guided by the shaft of light from the lamps in the hallway. Then she stopped, her heart beginning to race when she saw what looked like a boot lying on the floor...a boot she could see belonged to a body lying in the shadows.

  Laura gasped and kneeled down, registering simultaneously that the body was Seth’s and that he was breathing.

  “Seth,” she whispered. “What’s happened?” She scooted closer, her hands running over the pale contours of his face until she encountered a sticky wetness along his jaw that seemed to be seeping from above his left ear.

  She got her handkerchief from her purse and started gently to press it to his head, thinking to herself that there must have been some accident with the steam press. Where was his apprentice?

  Seth groaned, and she drew the handkerchief away, afraid she was hurting him. The image of Rashers’ body, lying in a pool of blood, flashed in her mind. She decided that she had to move Seth into the shaft of light so she could see if there were any other more serious injuries. He was sprawled on his right side, and she grabbed his left shoulder and pulled, which only started to turn him over.

  “Seth, Seth...please wake up!”

  Her panic rising, she grabbed him by his belt and tugged, succeeding in getting the top of his torso into the light. She couldn’t see any blood on his shirt front, but a dark blot on the cuff of his left sleeve worried her until she realized it was just ink. He was too big for her to lift. She should run down and get the porter...but she just couldn’t leave him unconscious like this. She lifted his head and rested it in her lap, again gently pressing the handkerchief to the wound to stop it bleeding.

  A noise caught her attention, and she looked up to see a figure of a man moving towards her. He carried a kerosene lamp in one hand and what looked like a bottle of whiskey in the other. Here was help.

  “Sir, can you help me? Mr. Timmons is hurt. Can you bring the lamp over here so I can see what is wrong?”

  The man lifted up the lamp, and she saw that it was Rashers’ foreman, the one she’d met with Orrie Childers outside of Hank’s.

  “Oh, Mr. Griggs. Do you know what happened? I don’t want to move him if there might be anything broken.”

  She watched in surprise as he simply turned away from her. He took a long swig from the bottle then put it and the lamp down on a table. Abruptly, he picked up a stack of paper from the table and tossed the sheets into the air, watching as they fell onto the floor.

  Shuffling through the mess, he grabbed up the bottle again and staggered down the row of tables, sweeping objects off the surfaces as he went along. He got to a box and swung it around, causing hundreds of pieces of card stock to fly out around the room.

  The man had clearly gone mad.

  She looked down at Seth and gently slapped his cheeks. “Please wake up, Seth.” She heard him groan again and thought she saw his eyelids flicker.

  “What the...Laura?” Seth stared up at her for a moment then started to struggle into a sitting position.

  “Shh...go slowly. I don’t know how hurt you are,” she whispered while she helped prop him up. “Mr. Griggs is here and seems to be very drunk. What happened?”

  Seth shook his head and then moaned, saying, “I don’t remember...my head?”

  “You have a wound up above your ear. Don’t touch it!”

  Seth straightened and started to try to stand, saying urgently, “I need to get you out of here. Griggs hit me.”

  Tangled in her skirt, Laura stumbled as she tried to rise beside him, and they both fell back to the floor. She untangled her skirts, then they both rose slowly together. Once standing, she pulled his arm around her shoulder to keep him upright. When she looked at his face, his eyes were partially closed. He looked like he might be about to pass out so she put both arms around him, saying, “Hold on.”

  He mumbled something as both his arms came up to encircle her. They stood for a moment in this position, then she heard him give a short intake of breath, and he moved his hands to her shoulders and pushed himself straight, stepping slightly away from her.

  “I�
��m all right. Let’s go,” he said, as he lurched towards the hallway, reaching out for the door frame to steady himself.

  Laura, realizing she’d left her purse on the floor, turned back and started to bend over to pick it up when she saw points of light dancing in the air. Shocked, she exclaimed, “Seth, he’s setting the proofs on fire.”

  Griggs had taken off the globe of the kerosene lamp and was using the unprotected flame to torch each of the pages that hung from the lines that ran across the room. The burning pages were dropping sparks down to ignite the rubbish that lay underfoot.

  “What the hell...” Seth was at her side. He shouted, “Stop it! You’ll set the whole building on fire.”

  Griggs turned towards them, visible in the glow of the rapidly spreading flames. He held the lamp in one hand and the bottle in the other, and he shouted back, “You tell that bitch; I’m the one who killed her husband. Tell her she ruined a good man...I know she’s the only reason he said those things to me. Tell her, if I can’t have Rashers...no one can!”

  And he lifted up the bottle of whiskey and the lamp over his head.

  Laura found herself roughly jerked around by Seth, who pulled her out into the hallway and buried her face in his chest, so that all she heard was the scream and felt the sudden blast of heat on her back.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Friday, evening, August 6, 1880

  “The information of grand larceny against William F. Reil was dismissed on mention of the District-Attorney.” San Francisco Chronicle, August 6, 1880

  Annie sat waiting for Nate. She stood up and went over to the small parlor’s front window, twitching back the heavy velvet curtains so she could look out at the street. At slightly past eight in the evening, the sun had long set, and there was only an occasional carriage that passed along towards Market. The day had been warm, for San Francisco, but she could see by the light of the gas lamps that the fog was insinuating its cool wet fingers down along the city streets.